become more
and more intimate with the old grandfather, and had even proposed to
him to accept of a room in his house. The old man, who, in the mean
while, had moved into somewhat larger quarters, so as to be ready to
receive the girl the moment she should knock at his door, declined this
offer, but was very glad to pass his lonely hours in the company of his
brilliant young friend. They would spend hours--for neither of them had
anything to do--deep in discussions about what was really the main
thing in art, or what should or should not be painted; and it was only
when they heard the door-bell ring at some unusual time that they would
both start up and listen eagerly, hoping it might possibly be the lost
girl returning penitently to her best friends.

The only ones whose spirits remained unaffected were Kohle and Schnetz;
the latter, because his Thersites disposition had struck its roots too
deeply into his nature for him to be either elated or depressed by
anything he experienced; Kohle, on the other hand, because, like the
happy genii of his Hoelderlin, he "soared in the celestial light above,"
and was incapable of giving his heart to the fate of mortals, no matter
how closely he might be bound to them by ties of friendship, for more
than a few hours at a time. During these misanthropical November days,
Schnetz, when not engaged in the service of his little highness, sat in
his den of _silhouettes_, cut out bitter satires, smoked, read Rabelais
at Rossel's suggestion, and, for whole days at a time, spoke to no one
except his pale little wife; while Kohle, in a far more wretched,
unheated room, passed his days making new designs which, with fingers
stiff with cold, but with a heart all aglow with happiness, he sketched
on the back of a large fire-screen instead of on paper, which he had
not the money to buy.

Under these circumstances it was not to be wondered at that the two
meetings of the Paradise Club, which took place before the end of the
year, were not attended by that festal flow of spirits that had
characterized most of their predecessors. Old Schoepf stayed away
altogether; Rossel did not speak a word; Jansen did not make his
appearance until nearly midnight, and sat brooding with a dark look in
his bright eyes, while he emptied glass after glass without being
warmed by his potations. Elfinger, whose relations to his pious
sweetheart grew every day more hopeless, and had begun to seriously
tell upon his sp